


Twizzlers

by midnighteverlark



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, High School, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Short One Shot, Truth or Dare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 11:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16575233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnighteverlark/pseuds/midnighteverlark
Summary: Prompt: "Picture The Party playing Truth or Dare and one of them dares Mike or Will to kiss the other and they become extremely flustered" (from an anonymous ask on Tumblr). I liked the prompt so much I wrote a tiny oneshot about it. Pure fun and fluff. Tiny little ficlet. Enjoy.





	Twizzlers

It starts with Max, because Max is a little shit.

Well, if you want to be exact, it was probably Lucas that’s really to blame.

So far, Lucas has been forced to tell the group about the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to him in front of a crush (setting his hair on fire in a chemistry lab in front of Angie Bowman), Dustin has had to stick his foot in the toilet and flush it, El has been making three books rotate in the air above their heads for upwards of ten minutes, and just a minute ago, Lucas dared Max to unzip El’s jacket with her teeth. The Party takes Truth or Dare  _ seriously _ . There’s honor and reputation at stake here. 

It was probably the jacket thing that did it. Because then it’s Max’s turn, and she’s still red and laughing from her dare, and her eyes lock on Mike. Mike just lifts his eyebrows in challenge. He’s ready. He’s been through this song and dance; he knows Max’s style. Over the years of the Party’s Friday night sleepovers, he’s done the prank calls, he’s sang the entire Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of his lungs, he’s spoken in a thick Russian accent for half an hour, he’s climbed the tree in the backyard. And more. He knows the kind of stuff Max dares people to do for her own amusement.

So he’s startled into silence when she says, “Mike, I dare you to kiss Will on the lips. For ten seconds.”

Will is the first one to say, “What?”

“It’s fair,” she says, smug, and settles back against the couch. 

They have rules. The dare has to be achievable in a relatively short amount of time; it can’t physically hurt anyone; it can’t spark the full fury of parents. Oh, and you can always decline - but then you lose all the points you’ve earned. Ever. You start over at zero.

Mike hasn’t had to start over in months; he’s running on something like two hundred points now. Five points for a truth; ten for a dare. 

Lucas and Dustin are whooping, laughing. Dustin twitches the scoreboard towards him and pick up a pencil. He stares at Mike expectantly, eraser poised.

Mike’s whole face feels like he’s two inches from a campfire. He glances at Will, and immediately wishes he hadn’t; Will catches his eye and looks down quickly. He’s sitting stiffly on the carpet, his bag of Twizzlers crumpled in one fist. 

Mike opens his mouth to say no, okay, erase his points. And then El crawls forward into the center and proposes, “Triple points for  _ both  _ participants,  _ if -”  _ he eyes glitter, and Mike’s stomach flip-flops. “ _ If  _ there’s tongue.”

And now  _ everyone  _ is cheering, not just Dustin and Lucas. Everyone except Mike and his best friend, who’s clearly trying to face Mike without quite looking at him.

“I, uh,” he mumbles, so quietly Mike almost doesn’t hear him over the whooping crowd. “I don’t. I mean. It’s not a big deal. I don’t mind. If you -”

“I don’t really care,” Mike says quickly, and then, “I mean, yeah, it’s not a big -”

“Just do it already,” Max goads, and Dustin holds up his watch. It beeps as he sets a timer.

“Ten seconds!”

The two victims, led to the slaughter for the sake of their friends’ entertainment, laugh and shake their heads as they scoot around to face each other. They sit knee-to-knee, and they look at each other in the half-second before Dustin yells, “On your marks, get set...” 

And Mike catches Will’s eyes again, and something in him goes off-balance. Will’s cheeks are red -  _ bright _ red, like all the blood in his body has rushed to his face - and he’s kind of folding in on himself, elbows and knees sticking out, back hunched - but his eyes don’t match. The whole rest of him - his whole demeanor - says,  _ I can’t believe I have to do this, this is so mortifying, let’s just get this over with, _ but his eyes say something else. His eyes keep flickering up. Catching on Mike’s and falling again. And every time they do they’re soft, and open, and full of... something. And Mike’s own pulse  _ ticks  _ through him, soft and quick, like a hummingbird. His damp palms buff down the sides of his jeans.

And then Dustin is yelling, “Go!” and Will is taking a deep breath and tilting forward it’s time now, Mike has to lean - 

They collide just a little too hard, and Mike makes a clipped little sound of not-quite-pain, and then Will is adjusting their angle so their lips actually line up. Mike takes a soft breath and relaxes just the slightest bit. This is okay. Will smells like soap and cold wind and the twizzlers he’s been eating, and at least he’s not immediately pulling away with a laugh of disgust. And the chanting crows is already at, “ _ Eight... seven...” _

At  _ six _ , Mike’s lips part in surprise at the tentative touch of a hot-slick tongue.

That’s right. El’s condition.

He’s gonna kill her.

_ “Four... three...” _

Abruptly, Mike finds a thought butting in. He’s glad it was Will. He couldn’t have done this with anyone else. If they had been at some big mid-junior-year house party and Max had dared him to kiss Courtney Engle or Rebekah Robertson, he never could have managed it.  

But, shouldn’t he be wishing it was a girl instead? Shouldn’t he be counting down the milliseconds until he can break away and wipe off his mouth on a sleeve? Shouldn’t -

_ “One!” _

Will is the one that breaks away. His head is down, bangs covering his face, and he’s breathing deep. But when he finally looks up, at the prodding and congratulatory slaps of the rest of the Party, he’s grinning. 

“Okay!” Max proclaims, “Thirty points for Mike, and thirty for Will.”

She points to the sheet and Dustin marks it down, laughing so hard that his handwriting is barely legible. 

Will isn’t laughing, but when he looks at Mike he smiles again - big and genuine and sheepish - and then lowers his head to hide it. He sticks a twizzler in his mouth and Mike watches it grow shorter for a moment.

“Mike.” Mike turns. El quirks an eyebrow. “You’re up.”

Mike throws himself back into the game. He’s far ahead of everyone else now; he’s determined not to let those points go to waste.

But an hour later, when they’re wrapping up and talking about movies and trying to wipe mustard off the wall (long story), Mike’s mind is still off somewhere else. It’s been over sixty minutes and he’s still just a tad dazed. Wondering just what it is about his best friend - with his flannel shirts unbuttoned over band tees, and his hair growing long and messy and parted to the side, and the pen doodles on his jeans, and his smile alternating from shy to impish... Mike busies himself with cleaning up, and he wonders what it is about his best friend that makes kissing a boy more than bearable.


End file.
